The Ups and Downs

I decided to do a few big rides this week. First up on Tuesday, I did the Dirt Bohlman. I'd been meaning to try this one on my gravel bike basically ever since I built it up, since it's pretty much the ideal case for it: a relatively smooth fire road at the far end of maybe 6 or 7 miles of pavement. I'd done this a few times before on my XC bike, and found it to be maybe a bit overkill for the fire road and less than ideal for the pavement leading up to it.

The only major downside to this ride was the weather this week. The temperature was good, but an inversion layer was trapping wood smoke from fireplaces, back yard fires, and wood stoves in the bay, so it was a good idea to chew the air thoroughly before inhaling it.

On the bright side, it did make for a pretty picture of Lexington Reservoir.

Anyway, on Friday I decided to cross another route off my gravel bike to-do list: Kennedy. Much like Dirt Bohlman, I'd done this one a few times before on my XC bike, which was a bit overkill for the fire road. Unlike the aforementioned route, though, there was only a few short miles of pavement before the dirt started, so it really suited either bike just fine.

The air was still plenty smoky though, but luckily, like the previous ride, I spent most of my time above the inversion layer.

You can just barely see the Mt Um cube in the distance from the upper helipad here. The trail network actually continues over the ridge, then drops down and back up again to reach the peak of Mt Um. I did that Dirt Cubed ride a while back, but didn't feel like repeating it this time; just getting to the top of Kennedy without keeling over dead is enough of an accomplishment.

Let There Be Different Light

When I moved in, the hall leading to the bedrooms was lit by a pair of LED pot lights. The only upgrade I made to them was to install a motion-triggered light switch so that I would actually use the lights rather than just ignoring them and stumbling through the darkness.

There was nothing particularly wrong with these lights, at least from this side of the ceiling. But, since they were retrofit LED modules inside regular can-style pot lights, they stuck up above the tops of the ceiling joists in the attic.

This meant that they were in the way of placing down a piece of plywood to walk on, directly in the middle of what was essentially the main thoroughfare of the attic. Not really the end of the world, but not an ideal situation.

Thankfully, it's a situation with a solution: we just need to remove the cans and replace the lights with canless LED modules.

Step one: remove the cans.

This was a little bit tricky because the cans are basically made of tinfoil and not even slightly designed to be removed. Thankfully they're cheap and I didn't intend to reuse them, so there wasn't anything stopping me from applying a bit of violence. Being careful not to mangle the drywall, of course.

Step two: install the canless LEDs.

These are way, way lower profile than the cans, as you can see, and they're now much lower than the joists. As a bonus, the insulation can be scooped back in to cover them completely, giving me an absolutely unmeasurably small increase in insulation here.

As another bonus these modules are a full 6 inches wide, rather than being a 4-inch module with a 6-inch flange (designed to fit into either a 4 or 6 inch can), so they look slightly less dorky.

I mean, I guess. I don't spend a lot of time staring at my lights.

Anyway, the important part is that I was able to move the plywood walkway over top of these, so it's now much easier to get around up in the attic.

Wooly Bully

A while back now I got myself a combination overlock/coverstitch machine. This type of sewing machine can create a number of different stitches that are impossible to do on a regular lockstitch style sewing machine, stitches that are commonly seen on commercially produced garments.

However, making these stitches with regular thread is really only half of the puzzle. The machine runs with multiple threads, and while the needle threads are usually ordinary, multi-ply spun threads; the threads used in the loopers are often what's known as "wooly nylon", even though most of the time it's actually just polyester.

This special type of thread is differentiated by the fact that it is not spun at all. It's essentially just a bundle of wrinkled fibers (and as such, it's only generally available in synthetics, since shorter natural fibers would just fall apart without being spun into a normal thread). When used in the loopers of an overlock or coverstitch machine, these fibers fluff out and provide a much different finish.

Of course, being fluffy means that it drags against the tension discs more, and so one needs to account for that so as not to unbalance the stitching.

Luckily my machine is very easy to adjust, and with just a little tweak the seam was correctly balanced again.

The difference on this test piece isn't terribly dramatic, but on a real garment the fluffiness stands out quite a lot more.

On this seam I only used the wooly nylon in the upper looper, since the lower looper threads won't be visible once the waistband is closed.

In the finished waistband, the wooly nylon provides a very soft, full finish to the back of the seams.

Definitely well worth the small amount of extra fuss to source a matching thread and deal with feeding the fluffy and somewhat cantankerous bundle of fibers through the machine.

A Burning Ring of Fire

I'm not really in any particular hurry to go down, down, down in a burning ring of fire. If I go down, down, down, I expect the flames will go higher.

It would burn, burn, burn; that ring of fire.

That ring of fire.

The Accretion Continues

I'm still pretty sure that ignoring the problem will be a successful strategy.

Despite the parts pile continuing to grow.

I suppose I could probably find some use for these carbon cranks.

Mysterious Sky Water

It's strange enough for water to fall from the sky, but this morning I discovered a strange new form of solidified water pouring out of the heavens.

Perhaps some day science will learn more about this strange, undiscovered phenomenon.

Anyway, this came on top of the 2.5 inches of rain that already fell at my house over the past 24 or so hours. Needless to say it's soggy out there.

Also, I am sad to report that this little furry friend seems to have died from hail.

And no other contributing causes.

Sub Zero

It got a little frosty overnight.

This is a totally unacceptable state of affairs.

Luckily I had the foresight to protect the lantana.

Which is a nice way to use the moving boxes I still have piled up from moving in here. I must say, they do work quite well.

Luckily the sun came out and burned off the frost pretty quickly.

But not before my cold-numbed hands fumbled my iPhone.

Which marks the first time I've ever managed to break a phone screen. Disappointing, but not the end of the world.

A quick trip to the Apple store and $129 later, all is right with the world again.